psychologywikiaorg-20200213-history
Nomads
in 2005. Approximately 40% of the ethnic Tibetan population is nomadic or semi-nomadic.In pictures: Tibetan nomads BBC News]] , Tibet. 1993. Smoke is from juniper being burnt as an offering at a ceremony.]] Nomadic people ( , nomádes, "those who let pasture herds") are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world.NOMADS - The FACTS Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but traditional nomadic behavior is increasingly rare in industrialized countries. Nomadic cultures are discussed in three categories according to economic specialization: hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads, and "peripatetic nomads". Nomadic hunting and gathering, following seasonally available wild plants and game, is by far the oldest human subsistence method. Pastoralists raise herds, driving them or moving with them, in patterns that normally avoid depleting pastures beyond their ability to recover. Peripatetic nomads, who offer the skills of a craft or trade to those they travel among, are most common in industrialized nations. Nomadic hunter-gatherers Many groups of 'nomadic' hunter-gatherers (also known as foragers) moved from campsite to campsite, following game and wild fruits and vegetables. Known examples include: * Various groups of Pygmies, such as the Mbuti of the Ituri Rain forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo * The Bushmen of Southern Africa * Most Indigenous Australians prior to Western contact * Some Adivasi tribal people of India * Many Native Americans, such as the Nukak-Makú, Comanches and many other Plains Indians, the Yahi of California, indigenous inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, or early people of Montana located at Barton Gulch Pastoral nomads :See also nomadic pastoralism Pastoral nomads are nomads moving between pastures. Nomadic pastoralism is thought to have developed in three stages that accompanied population growth and an increase in the complexity of social organization. Karim Sadr has proposed the following stages: *'Pastoralism:' This is a mixed economy with a symbiosis within the family. *'Agropastoralism:' This is when symbiosis is between segments or clans within an ethnic group. *'True Nomadism:' This is when symbiosis is at the regional level, generally between specialized nomadic and agricultural populations. The pastoralists are sedentary to a certain area, as they move between the permanent spring, summer, autumn and winter (or dry and wet season) pastures for their livestock. The nomads moved depending on the availability of resources.Nomads of the Middle East, David Zeidan, OM-IRC, 1995 Origin of nomadic pastoralism Nomadic pastoralism seems to have developed as a part of the secondary products revolution proposed by Andrew Sherratt, in which early pre-pottery Neolithic cultures that had used animals as live meat ("on the hoof") also began using animals for their secondary products, for example, milk and its associated dairy products, wool and other animal hair, hides and consequently leather, for fuel and fertilizer, and traction. The first nomadic pastoral society developed in the period from 8500-6500 BC in the area of the southern Levant. There, during a period of increasing aridity, ppnb, which seems to have been a cultural fusion between a newly arrived Mesolithic people from Egypt (the Harifian culture), adopting their nomadic hunting lifestyle to the raising of stock. This lifestyle quickly developed into what Jaris Yurins has called the circum-Arabian nomadic pastoral techno-complex and is possibly associated with the appearance of [[Semitic languages] in the region of the Ancient Near East. The rapid spread of such nomadic pastoralism was typical of such later developments as of the Yamnaya culture of the horse and cattle nomads of the Eurasian steppe, or of the Turko-Mongol spread of the later Middle Ages.Patterns of Subsistence: Pastoralism Increased nomadism in the former Soviet Union One of the results of the break-up of the Soviet Union and the subsequent political independence and economic collapse of its Central Asian republics is the resurgence of pastoral nomadism.Pastoral Livestock Development in Central Asia, FAO Rural Development Division Taking the Kyrgyz people as a representative example nomadism was the center of their economy prior to Russian colonization at the turn of the C19/C20, when they were settled into agricultural villages. The population became increasingly urbanized after World War II, but some people continued to take their herds of horses and cows to the high pasture (jailoo) every summer, i.e. a pattern of transhumance. Since the 1990s, as the cash economy shrunk, unemployed relatives were absorbed back on the family farm, and the importance of this form of nomadism has increased. The symbols of nomadism, specifically the crown of the grey felt tent known as the yurt, appears on the national flag, emphasizing the centrality of their nomadic history and past in the creation of the modern nation of Kyrgyzstan. Sedentarization By 1920, nomadic pastoral tribes represented over a quarter of Iran's population.Persian & Iranian Nomads at Best Tribal pastures were nationalized during the 1960s. The National Commission of UNESCO registered the population of Iran at 21 million in 1963, of whom two million (9.5%) were nomads.Censuses of Pastoral Nomads and Some General Remarks about the Census of Nomadic Tribes of Iran in 1998 Although the nomadic population of Iran has dramatically decreased in the 20th century, Iran still has one of the largest nomadic populations in the world, an estimated 1.5 million in a country of about 70 million.Iran's nomads going extinct, Los Angeles Times, February 18, 2008 nomads in the steppes of the Russian Empire, by pioneer color photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, ca. 1910]] In Kazakhstan where the major agricultural activity was nomadic herding,Kazakhstan Overview forced collectivization under Stalin’s rule met with massive resistance and major losses and confiscation of livestock.The Silent Steppe. The Story of a Kazakh nomad under Stalin. Livestock in Kazakhstan fell from 7 million cattle to 1.6 million and from 22 million sheep to 1.7 million. The resulting Soviet famine of 1932-1933|famine of 1931-1934]] caused some 1.5 million deaths: this represents more than 40% of the total Kazakh population at that time.The Development of Kazakhstan during the Soviet period In the 1950s as well as the 1960s, large numbers of Bedouin throughout the Middle East started to leave the traditional, nomadic life to settle in the cities of the Middle East, especially as home ranges have shrunk and population levels have grown. Government policies in Egypt and Israel, oil production in Libya and the Persian Gulf, as well as a desire for improved standards of living, effectively led most Bedouin to become settled citizens of various nations, rather than stateless nomadic herders. A century ago nomadic Bedouin still made up some 10% of the total Arab population. Today they account for some 1% of the total.The Middle East People Groups and Their Distribution, DAVID ZEIDAN, OM-IRC, 1995 At independence in 1960, Mauritania was essentially a nomadic society. The great Sahel droughts of the early 1970s caused massive problems in a country where 85% of its inhabitants were nomadic herders. Today only 15% remain nomads.Mauritania - POLITICAL POWER IN THE MID-1980s, U.S. Library of Congress As many as 2 million nomadic Kuchis wandered over Afghanistan in the years before the Soviet invasion, and most experts agreed that by 2000 the number had fallen dramatically, perhaps by half. The severe drought had destroyed 80% of the livestock in some areas.Severe Drought Driving Nomads From Desert, Los Angeles Times, June 30, 2000 Niger experienced a serious food crisis in 2005 following erratic rainfall and desert locust invasions. Nomads such as the Tuareg and Fulani, who make up about 20% of Niger's 12.9 million population, had been so badly hit by the Niger food crisis that their already fragile way of life is at risk.Niger way of life 'under threat', BBC News, August 16, 2005 Nomads in Mali were also affected.Mali's nomads face famine BBC News, August 9, 2005 See also *Human migration *Seasonal human migration *Transhumance References Further reading *Oberfalzerova, Alena. (2006): Metaphors and Nomads, Triton , Prague. ISBN 8072548492 *Sadr, Karim. The Development of Nomadism in Ancient Northeast Africa, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. ISBN 0-8122-3066-3 *Cowan, Gregory. "Nomadology in Architecture: Ephemerality, Movement and Collaboration" University of Adelaide 2002 (available: http://hdl.handle.net/2440/37830 http://thesis.library.adelaide.edu.au/public/adt-SUA20060904.161630/) *Chatwin, Bruce. The Songlines (1987) *Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (1980) *Melvyn Goldstein: The Impact of China's Reform Policy on the Nomads of Western Tibet *The Remote World of Tibet's Nomads *Grousset, René. L'Empire des Steppes (1939) *Michael Haerdter Remarks on modernity, mobility, nomadism and the arts *Kradin, Nikolay. Nomadic Empires in Evolutionary Perspective. In Alternatives of Social Evolution. Ed. by N.N. Kradin, A.V. Korotayev, Dmitri Bondarenko, V. de Munck, and P.K. Wason (p. 274-288). Vladivostok: Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; reprinted in: The Early State, its Alternatives and Analogues. Ed. by Leonid Grinin et al. (р. 501-524). Volgograd: Uchitel', 2004. * Michael Haerdter Remarks on modernity, mobility, nomadism and the arts * Kradin, Nikolay N. 2002. [http://jwsr.ucr.edu/archive/vol8/number3/pdf/jwsr-v8n3-kradin.pdf Nomadism, Evolution, and World-Systems: Pastoral Societies in Theories of Historical Development. Journal of World-System Research 8: 368-388]. * Kradin, Nikolay N. 2003. Nomadic Empires: Origins, Rise, Decline. In Nomadic Pathways in Social Evolution. Ed. by N.N. Kradin, Dmitri Bondarenko, and T. Barfield (p. 73-87). Moscow: Center for Civilizational Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences. * Kradin, Nikolay N. 2006. [http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/SF/Complex_lat-1.doc Cultural Complexity of Pastoral Nomads. World Cultures 15: 171-189]. * Beall, Cynthia and Goldstein, Melvyn: Past becoming future gor Mongolian nomads National Geographic Magazine May 1993 * Vigo, Julian. 'Nomadic Sexualities and Nationalities: Postcolonial Performative Words and Visual Texts'. Inscriptions in the Sand Famagusta: Eastern Mediterranean University Press, 2005. External links * African Pygmies Nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples in the Central African rainforest * Category:Human migration Category:Cultural anthropology Category:Simple living Category:Demography